Tag Archives: Alexander Seton

Sydney, Australia based Alexander Seton’s sculptures are a thing of wonder. Stare at them for a while and you’ll soon realize that these casual images of light weight clothing are in fact carved out of marble, one of the heaviest stones around!

“Alexander Seton’s work memorializes impermanence and the transitory. His marble sculptures give permanent form to fleeting cultural moments and fashions, capturing icons of the contemporary world. In Elegy On Resistance Seton has arranged around a central figure [Soloist] a group of CCTV cameras [Quartet 1 – 4] and hanging hoodies [Chorus 1-7]. The naming of these objects implies a relationship, like a musical performance, an ensemble that bears witness to the resistance of the individual against the apparatus of surveillance and control. The central track-suited man might be a heroic figure, but, in reality, the cities of the modern world are full of such figures, faces shrouded and bodies stooped, faceless everymen who habitually pass through train stations, shopping centres and the outer zones of the non-place. These hooded figures are ambiguous citizens, often feared as potential criminals, or as wild youth gone wrong. In Seton’s work, however, the figure recalls the pose of a Buddha, but with its substance – the body within – missing. There are connotations of religious art here, but in the generic striping of the tracksuit, the hands in pockets, the crossed legs and the unmistakably casual pose of a street beggar, a skillful conceptual play between the ubiquity and invisibility of an instantly recognizable, yet largely ignored figure.” -Andrew Frost